The invention relates to services offered to users of electronic equipment, especially to services for users of mobile devices such as mobile phones.
Current trends indicate that by 2002 there will be 1B subscribers worldwide to mobile phones. By 2004 there will be more mobile phones in use than PC""s, and a substantial percentage of these phones will be Web-enabled. Further, cellular phones have become personal, trusted devices. As a result a mobile information society is developing. Personalized and localized services are believed to become increasingly more important.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,861, herein incorporated by reference, discloses the use of wireless telephones within the context of advertisement billboards. The user of a wireless telephone obtains the telephone number of a vendor by activating his/her wireless telephone to transmit a prompt signal to an active advertisement source and to receive from the advertisement source a response signal containing the telephone number of the advertising vendor. The telephone number can then be used to automatically place a call to that vendor via the public switch telephone network. Alternatively, the telephone number can be stored for use later on. This arrangement can be used to place a call to a vendor without having to either memorize the telephone number or to write it down. The signals between the billboard and the caller can be transmitted as modulated infrared (IR) or radio frequency (RF) signals.
As another example, the publication xe2x80x9cImpulse: Location-based Agent Assistancexe2x80x9d, Jim Youll, Joan Morris, Raffi Krikorian and Pattie Maes, MIT Media Lab, December 1999, discusses a research project on location-based computing supported by software agents. The user has a mobile computing appliance, e.g., a PDA with wireless Internet connection and a GPS receiver. A xe2x80x9cUser Agentxe2x80x9d represents user""s interest and interacts with xe2x80x9cProvider Agentsxe2x80x9d that represent Providers: physical resources such as businesses, services, attractions, events, in the user""s physical domain. The resources have an Internet presence (URL""s) and have registered with a specific server. The specific server allows a User Agent to query for particular resources in the geographic vicinity of the user. The User Agent receives its tasks from the user in the form of a list of goals represented by key words entered in advance by the user into the appliance. The User Agent uses these data to build a user profile and to build queries for the server and the Provider Agents. The server uses the geographic location of the user, as determined through the GPS receiver, as its primary criterion in the queries. Upon finding results, the server returns an XML document including geographic location of each Provider""s service and a description of how to query each Provider Agent. After determining the reachable Providers, the User Agent selects the relevant one(s) and sends a direct query to it or them. The latter is achieved through reading the documents at the URL""s provided. Upon this analysis the user gets notified of potential matches.
As yet another example, Hewlett-Packard has posted a publication on the Web at  less than http://www.cooltown.hp.com/papers/webpres/WebPresence.htm greater than  about their xe2x80x9cCooltownxe2x80x9d project. The convergence of Web technology, wireless networks and portable client devices provides design opportunities for computer/communications systems. In the HP Labs xe2x80x9cCooltownxe2x80x9d project these opportunities have been explored through an infrastructure to support web presence for people, places and objects. Web servers have been put into objects such as printers and information has been stored on the web servers about objects such as artwork. Physically related objects are grouped into places embodied in web servers. Systems that are location-aware can be created using URL""s for addressing, physical URL beaconing and sensing of URL""s for discovery, and localized web servers for directories. The systems are ubiquitous to support nomadic users. On top of this infrastructure the Internet connectivity can be leveraged to support communications services. Web presence bridges the World Wide Web and the physical world inhabited by the users, providing a model for supporting nomadic users without a central control point.
The Cooltown Museum and Bookstore offer visitors a Web-enhanced experience. As visitors tour the museum, their portable digital assistant (PDA) can receive Web URLs from wireless xe2x80x9cbeaconsxe2x80x9d. These beacons are small infrared transceivers located close to pictures or sculptures; the URLs link into a Web of information about the items. Using the PDA""s Web browser, visitors can read or hear about the artist or the work and about related art works in the museum. The URLs can also be stored as bookmarks for further study or they can be used to select reproductions of the artwork from the museum""s online store. The museum staff uses the same URLs for inventory control as the URLs point to the object""s point of Web presence.
The inventors have realized that the systems discussed above have some drawbacks.
The system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,861 mentioned above lacks some flexibility and user-friendliness. The user him- or herself has to initiate the interaction between the billboard. Also, the functionality of the system is restricted to a one-to-one relationship between the billboard, its geographic location and the vendor""s telephone number broadcasted. That is, the information obtained by the end-user is only a specific telephone number. It is unclear from U.S. Pat. No. 5,835,861 how the end-user distinguishes between multiple telephone numbers thus gathered from as many billboards. The user""s caller-ID can be received and processed by the billboard, thus possibly compromising privacy. Note that the communication is independent of the orientation of the user with respect to the billboard, which precludes having two or more billboards within a certain range.
The Impulse system requires a GPS functionality for determining the user""s location. Internet access capabilities are required for communication between the software agents in the client-server architecture. In the Impulse system, user agents are all user initiated. The user has little, if any, control over the provider agents and the negotiation process between provider agents and user agents. The use of provider agents implies a lack of privacy for the user.
The Cooltown system requires a full web browser and display capability to allow navigation within the Web page indicated by the URL broadcasted. In addition, the user gets exposed to URL""s without knowing in advance whether or not the content information of the associated Web page is relevant to the user. Also, the user has to keep his/her client device always on for being able to browse the Web pages while on the move.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a method and system that are more user-friendly, provide more privacy or are more flexible than the systems discussed above.
To this end, the invention provides a method of enabling a user of a mobile communication device to receive a short-range wireless facilitation signal on the device. A beacon transmits the facilitating signal. When the user""s device is within range of the beacon the facilitation signal initiates associating the facilitating signal with a service. The initiating leads conditionally to alerting the user to the service, depending on a user-profile, preferably stored at the mobile device. Accordingly, the user is enabled to get only information about services that are of interest to him/her as indicated by the user-profile. If the service associated with the facilitation signal matches the user-profile, the user gets alerted to the service via the device, e.g., via a text message generated on a display of the communication device. If the service does not match the profile, the device does not alert the user.
The alerting text message can be generated in a way similar to paging or SMS (Short Message Service). SMS uses GSM communication and allows sending of text messages of up to 160 characters to mobile phones. Preferably, the user can program the device so that he/she is to be alerted through an audible signal if the service matches the user""s profile. This way, the user does not have to keep an eye on the mobile communication device all the time. Preferably, the device can store the facilitation signals and/or the messages thus received for retrieval later on. Other mechanisms to alert the user can be used, e.g., a visual warning on the mobile communication device or a tactile warning through a vibration unit in the communication device as known from pagers, etc. Accordingly, alerts can be tactile (vibration), text, visual or audible. Different modalities, e.g., amplitudes or styles, can be used for different priorities within the current user""s context. The context (filter) selection by the user may well control the modality of any alerts as well as what opportunities are alerted.
Emerging wireless PAN/LAN network protocols, such as IrDA, Bluetooth and HomeRF, enable mobile devices to become a dynamic part of a home-, office- or community network. Especially a mobile phone equipped with, e.g., Bluetooth-compatible hardware and software, can communicate directly with a local device and/or local service. In general, each network component can be a service-offer-point (SOP). The network comprises, for example, a home network, an office network, or an infrastructure of components in a public place such as a shopping mall, a street, an airport, a local town network or community network, etc. Each component has a beacon that transmits or broadcasts a facilitation signal associated with meta-data relating to information content or services provided at, or represented by, the component or associated with the network. The beacon""s range is typically short-range as with Bluetooth.
Preferably, the user-profile is user-programmable. For example, the user is enabled to set his/her communication device into one (or more) of multiple activity modes, e.g., shopping, contacting, chatting, messaging with friends, special interests such as sports, communal activities, etc. The user may have multiple profiles that he/she can select depending on the context or environment. The user can specify the shopping mode as having a particular interest in, e.g., books, CD""s, DVD""s travel arrangements, tools, etc., according to a topic or interested if on sale with a discount, etc. Facilitation signals that are associated with this shopping activity then cause the user to be alerted of certain nearby services or goods. The contacting mode relies on messages posted by other people and carried, or referred to, by the facilitation signal. If the message or sender group fits the current user-profile, i.e., does not get filtered out, the user gets alerted to the message. The message posted is, e.g., a virtual advertisement by a private person relating to goods the person wants to sell or buy, or in the chatting mode a virtual announcement for meeting another person. The message posted in this manner can be referred to as xe2x80x9cVirtual Graffitixe2x80x9d, and includes text and/or voice. In a special interest mode, the user allows the mobile communication device to become susceptible to services that relate to special interests. For example, a historically, geologically, architecturally, fashionably etc., interesting district of a certain region has a network of beacons that broadcast facilitation signals relating to relevant sites and their background information. The facilitation signals labeled xe2x80x9chistoricxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9carchitecturalxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cfashionablexe2x80x9d, etc., cause the user to be alerted of a relevant site or associated local service, while roaming within range of the relevant beacon, if the user has programmed his/her profile accordingly.
The user may consciously select a context filter from his/her set. The selection may also be done through a default process, e.g., a tagged pouch that contains the phone sets its default context, or the user may allow the environment to automatically trigger the selection of one of the user""s filters, e.g., as he/she walks into a place.
Preferably, the association between the facilitation signal and the service is user-programmable. That is, the user is allowed to program an association between a certain type of facilitation signal with a certain service provider of his/her own choice, hence the title of this invention: xe2x80x9cPortable Micro Portalxe2x80x9d. The invention thus enables the user of a mobile device to leverage personalized relationships with external servers while communicating with local or personal-area SOPs. The mobile device receives information from an SOP, determines at least one action type associated with this information, performs a type-based lookup of a personal relationship with a service provider, and accesses an external server or a wide area network telephone number, associated with the action type and the service provider.
The invention maintains privacy and user control, but still facilitates a push technology. That is, the user remains anonymous to the system, receives all possible alerts, and has a context filter in his/her own portal to let through matches or has the matches recorded for future examination. Possibly, the micro portal could adapt and learn from the user""s acceptance and ignorance of alerts within different contexts so as to improve the context filters.